Parents of a Georgia college freshman first learned from Facebook that their daughter was found dead in a a dorm room just before Thanksgiving. They are now seeking social media assistance in solving the mystery of Jasmine Benjamin's death, which police are investigating as a homicide. (AP)

  • Mister44

    Weird – I learned about my great uncles death via Facebook a few weeks ago before anywhere else.

  • EH

    Ah yes, suddenly the elevator cams aren’t on backorder anymore.

  • Boundegar

    So Facebook is becoming a communication medium.  Perhaps there were shocking stories in the 1920s of people learning terrible things via telephone-contraption?

    • DisGuest

      I’d rather be informed about the death of a loved one via the old telephone contraption instead of reading about it online. It’s just cold to post a comment about it.

      • Peaked

        It wasn’t 100% clear from the articles about this that I’ve seen that the university did anything wrong. While a phone call would be much preferable, it may simply have been the case that social media moves quicker than the university’s public safety and thus they found out from her friend’s Facebook post first. Now, I’ve not seen anything absolving the university either. It’s possible they were dragging their feet, but it’s entirely plausible that this situation, while unfortunate, is forgivable. It wasn’t as if the university just posted an announcement to Facebook themselves and decided that was sufficient.

        • DisGuest

          I wasn’t faulting anyone. I was responding to a joke in a comment about how it was unsurprising that someone might find out this way (online) versus the 1920′s (reading: old days) when you’d find out via a phone call, and my point was that I’d still rather find out the old way. Where you came to the conclusion that I was blaming anyone, I don’t know. I just mentioned that reading this type of info online was cold.
          Looking back:
          * I should have edited my first comment to read more in the vein of how I intended it.

  • NI MEN HAO-DY TRAMPOLINA

    Alone Together… we are.

    Sherry Turkle’s book of that same name is worth a read…